Sunday, November 3, 2013

GEORGE
BORGESI was 36 when he was indicted on racketeering charges in 2000.
The hotheaded mobster was convicted the following year and spent his 40s
in federal lockups in West Virginia and North Carolina.
Borgesi,
now 50, completed that prison sentence in 2011 but hasn't gotten out
yet, and the feds keep extending their invitation for him to stay even
longer, say, into his 60s.
They won't take no for an answer.
"He's not the same guy as when he went into the system. It breaks my heart," said Borgesi's mother, Manny. "It's a vendetta."
It's
starting to seem like the U.S. government won't ever set Borgesi free,
and that's turning "Georgie Boy" into an angry man. His hair is thin,
his temper is short, and he's definitely not mellowing with age. Earlier
this year, he called an assistant U.S. attorney a "f---in' punk" to his
face when they crossed paths in a courtroom.

Borgesi,
described by the feds as a onetime mob consigliere, or high-ranking
adviser to the boss, has remained in federal custody for more than two
years as a result of a 2011 racketeering indictment that blocked his
release on the 2001 conviction.
In February, a jury found him not
guilty of 13 counts related to loan-sharking he allegedly directed from
prison, but deadlocked on the indictment's main racketeering-conspiracy
count. The Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Pretrial Services Office
recommended that he be released on bail, according to his attorney at
the time. His family figured he'd be coming home.
Wrong.
Instead,
Borgesi, the nephew of reputed mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi, has
been held without bail while awaiting a retrial that is scheduled to
begin next week.
He's furious. During a phone call with his
brother this week, Borgesi lashed out at the FBI agents, prosecutors,
judge and paid government informants who he says are hell-bent on making
his life miserable. There were probably more expletives used than
printable words.
"It's disgusting. It's a joke," Anthony Borgesi said into his car's speakerphone with a Daily News reporter present.
"It is a joke, but I'm still sitting here," George Borgesi replied from the federal detention center at 7th and Arch streets.
Borgesi
has been penning lengthy screeds from his cell, alleging that the
government has harassed his friends and family while paying large sums
of money to criminals who testify against him. Even ex-boss Joseph
"Skinny Joey" Merlino was released from prison in 2011 and is soaking up
the rays in Florida.
"Joey got out years ago. People come up to
me in the city and they can't understand why my brother's not out. He
couldn't even get bail," Anthony Borgesi said. "It boggles the mind how
the government can get away with this."
In an interview this week,
Manny and Anthony Borgesi accused the government of violating George
Borgesi's civil rights. They say he has been thrown in solitary
confinement and denied medical treatment as the feds seek to prove that
he remained active in mob activities from prison. He developed Bell's
palsy after the last trial, they said.
"We want people to see what
they're doing to my brother. They're playing dirty," said Anthony
Borgesi, adding that if George Borgesi were a black prisoner, the
country wouldn't stand for it. "Where's our Al Sharpton?"
The
Borgesi family says that FBI agents have lied during the investigation,
have bragged that U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno is "our judge"
and have taunted Borgesi by saying, for example, that he will never be
able to consummate his marriage.
"Enough is enough now," Anthony Borgesi said. "There is no justice."
David
Fritchey, chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in the U.S.
Attorney's Office, declined to comment on Borgesi's grievances. "It's
hardly uncommon," Fritchey said of his complaints. "I'm sure Jerry
Sandusky is not happy about being in prison, either."
In a recent
20-page letter, Borgesi wrote that the FBI has used mob-like tactics to
gather evidence, intimidating his friends and family with aggressive
surveillance and subpoenas, and threatening innocent people with
business troubles if they don't cooperate with the investigation.
"They
scare almost everybody into saying anything. People do not know that.
You go to a business and tell somebody they will develop tax, liquor, or
any kind of problem if they don't cooperate, and then scare them,"
Borgesi wrote. "We do it, anything close to that, it is extortion,
witness tampering, obstruction of justice. They threaten people with
jail or ruin their livelihoods, but because of that badge, they think
they are above everything and everybody."
Next week's retrial of
Borgesi and Ligambi, 74, could last until Christmas. Prosecutors will
use much of the same evidence from the last 16-week mob trial, including
secretly recorded conversations and mob rats with plenty of their own
baggage.
The jury, for instance, is expected to hear from Pete
"The Crumb" Caprio, an 84-year-old admitted murderer who had collected
nearly $400,000 in taxpayer funds as of January for his ongoing
cooperation. And former mob associate Louis "Bent Finger Lou" Monacello,
an egomaniacal blowhard who is rumored to have had a penchant for
drinking out of a jewel-encrusted chalice.
Monacello, 46, has
admitted to splitting a man's head open with a baseball bat and was
caught on tape offering money to have another mobster beaten. Sources
say the government paid him $25,000 this year to relocate, in addition
to other payments. Monacello, who could not be reached for comment, is
now a regional director at ACN Inc., a multilevel marketing company,
like Amway.
"As an ACN Independent Business Owner, I have the
opportunity to have my own home-based business offering the services
people need and use every day," reads Monacello's pitch on his website.
"In fact, I'm able to offer my friends and family more choices, at a
greater value, on the products and services they simply can't live
without."
(Asked how Monacello got his moniker, Anthony Borgesi
said: "The real story is he cut the tendon in his finger opening a
bottle.")
A new witness this time around is Anthony Aponick, a
former New York mobster and serial bank robber who served prison time
with Borgesi in Beckley, W.Va., about 10 years ago. Sources say Aponick,
who was arrested again in August for allegedly throwing his wife out of
a moving vehicle, has collected more than $130,000 in taxpayer funds
since 2010. Zane Memeger, now the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia,
traveled to New York City in 2003 to ask a federal judge to reduce his
sentence on an armed-robbery conviction, sources said.
"They are
the real criminals," Manny Borgesi said of Monacello, Aponick and other
government witnesses. "They are given carte blanche to do whatever they
want as long as they continue to lie."
In his jailhouse letter,
George Borgesi wrote that Aponick is a heroin addict who repeatedly
tried to recruit him to participate in crimes as part of a government
setup. "Shows you how desperate they are," he wrote.
Borgesi's attorney, Christopher Warren, declined to comment yesterday, other than to say that Borgesi denies the allegations.
Next
week, prosecutors will attempt to convince a jury that Borgesi
continued to participate in a mob-racketeering conspiracy while in
prison. Robreno has ruled that prosecutors will not have to prove that
Borgesi or Ligambi personally committed the underlying crimes.
"You
can direct it, or profit from it, or just want it to succeed," said
Fritchey, speaking of the racketeering-conspiracy law in general, not of
the mob case.
"It's the same principal as if Chip Kelly doesn't
go out on the field and run plays, but he wants the Eagles to succeed,"
Fritchey said of the coach. "He never steps on the field. You don't have
to personally throw any passes or block anybody. All you have to do is
join. You can sit on the bench."